You guys don't encourage these clowns. They just try to get a reaction from us.

Well, if nothing else I do think the thread is an interesting comparison study in literacy. There's a striking difference between Andrew's posts and the responses in terms of such things as sentence structure and punctuation.

I'm willing to believe that the car story and even the inheritance story are true. They just don't sound very much like miracles.

I have had people help me change tires several times, once on my way to a job interview that I would have missed. Each time the man who helpled me refused to take money.[1] I have found money many times and have even inherited some money. Miracles?

We went around and around with Wayne, trying to get him to explain the difference between an unlikely but humanly possible event, and a miracle.

The first is getting someone to fix your car quickly, or someone unexpectedly getting a large sum of money. These things happen, maybe not all the time or to everyone. But they do happen, to people of different religions and to atheists. Without the need for divine intervention. If it is something that can happen to an atheist without any praying, or to anyone of any religion, it cannot count as a miracle from your god.

A miracle would be something that could not possibly happen without magical or supernatural intervention from your god. An angel arrives in response to your prayer, lifts the stalled car and levitates you to your destination in seconds. An empty box produces $100 cash every single time you open it, as long as you say a prayer to Jesus first.

Think we can get Andrew to send us each a couple thou from his homeless friend's inheritance, if we agree to convert to his faith?

FWIW, my dad says that when he was about 22 he lost control of his car in which 2 of his younger siblings were passengers. it rolled down an enbankment and flipped. He got out with his brother but his sister was trapped under the car (no seatbelts). He managed to lift the car up while his brother pulled her clear. When the police arrived they point blank refused to believe his story, saying one person couldn't have lifted the car. His brother has always backed him up though.

In some ways my dads whole life is a miracle, certainly very unlikely. He left home at 15, was raped while working in the bush, became an elite sportsperson but then got involved with drugs and gambling addiction. Somehow ended up being invited to a church service where he felt God calling him. He went to theological college and passed ( that might sound easy, but learning ancient Greek with no high school background to speak of can't have been easy ) and worked in church ministry for 35 years.

I tend to skepticism at reports of modern miracles, but I have no reason to doubt the truth of the car story. I guess a non-miracle explanation might be a rush of adrenaline or some such thing.

My faith in God is not dependent on Him performing modern day miracles in any case.

Here's a medium size miracle. I was driving home from church one night on the freeway and my right tire popped. I immediately began calling upon God and having absolute trust that He would help me (since I had no phone). And I kid you not the second car that passed by pulled over and happened to be a mechanic. By the time I finished using his phone (and didn't get through to anyone) he had already fixed the tire completely and when I looked at his phone the header on it was this "praise God". Who knows that might have been an angel since I know that they were all around me and following me home because I saw them and could feel them all around me.

Hah! I remember some incorrigible idiot at FRDB by the name of Self-Mutation using a similar story!

That's his first version of the story. He kept changing it (quite substantially sometimes) when everyone kept poking holes in his account. Every time others would point out he changed his story he would assert that he never did.S-M never, ever figured out what constituted evidence no matter how many time it was defined for him. Hopefully Andrew will figure out what evidence is soon.

no there was no spare tire. He fixed it with a generator pump that he had handy and some other equipment.

@MM - Thank you for sharing your father's story with us. He does sound like an extraordinary human being - a self sufficient risk taker, someone who overcame hardships, and then victimized himself with drugs and gambling, only to pull himself out of it and pursue education against all odds. I'm guessing he served as a complex and stimulating role model when you were growing up.

I ascribe to the adrenaline theory. His sister was trapped. He lifted the car. Under normal circumstances, he could not have done it.

yeah right the chances that a mechanic with the right equipment would be the second car and stop within 2 minutes of me praying for a miracle are outstanding odds. Escpecially outstanding that is that his phone would say praise God.

Really? How do you calculate those odds?

First point: the fact that he stopped at all, and that his phone said "praise God", are not worthy of seperate mention. Clearly from his phone he is a committed Christian, and so he would of course stop for you, knowing as he did the story of the Good Samaritan.

But one thing I don't understand - what exactly are you claiming your god DID in this instance? I can think of three possibles, though perhaps you have another in mind? I'd be grateful if you would let me know which of these you are claiming is correct.

1) God made the man stop. The most trivial of claims. The man was driving along that road entirely by coincidence. He did not intend to stop (Bad Christian! See above), but your god altered his mind and forced him to decide to stop. If this is your claim, how do you reconcile that with Free Will (assuming you believe in it)?

2) God made the man a mechanic. That man would have been driving along anyway, and would have stopped anyway.....but your god ensured that his life decisions resulted in him becoming a mechanic. This is a greater steamrollering of free will, what if he'd wanted to be a surgeon but (in order to fulfil your prayer), your god altered his mind and made him opt for the life of a mechanic? This implies that your god has no problem with taking huge swipes at a person's life and forcing them down a particular road. Are you comfortable with that?

3) God made sure the man was on that road. Wow. Now this likely requires a HUGE amount of intervention in the world. At minimum, he was forced to choose a different route to that which he would have preferred to take. But it could mean that, to ensure he took THAT route, your god had to ensure he was on his way to a call, say. Are you suggesting your god caused someone else's car to break down, in order that the machanic was driving along that road at that time?

With all the above, remember that you are claiming this was a MIRACLE, and not coincidence. For it to be a miracle, it has to have been something your god actually DID - so you cannot therefore claim that your god did NOT override that man's free will on your behalf.

And that's what I don't get - your god apparently places a huge reliance on free will and people making choices....and yet, because you are too dumb to know how to use a jack, or to carry a spare tyre, he happily overrode free will to a significant degree in order to save you some inconvenience. Is that the god that you wish to protray to us? Because is sounds like your god has huge double standards if you are.

Final thought: no matter how you cut it, your claim is that your god directly intervened in the world, rapidly and significantly, to answer your prayer. So why aren't you praying for a cure for cancer, or for an end to famine? You've shown us that god jumps when you call, so why not pray for others rather than yourself?

And if you ARE praying for those things.....can you explain why your god leaps so quickly to your aid to save you a little inconvenience, but ignores you when you ask for aid for the suffering of others?

If you REALLY want us to come around to your god, those are questions you need to answer.

No I was saying that I think he was an angel not a man maybe. I have seen angels before in the natural before. The whole event surrounded me seeing them in the Spirit and then calling upon God right when the tire poppped only 2 seconds later for a guy to stop with the right equipment (not my spare I didn't have one) and fix it and his phone says praise God. Thats a medium miracle anyway you look at it and maybe even a big one if that guy happened to be a real angel and not a man.

No I was saying that I think he was an angel not a man maybe. I have seen angels before in the natural before.

Andrew, I personally think that "angels" are fictional. Perhaps your imagination is unusually vivid, or there may be a more serious neurological condition at play here. If you regularly see auras around objects, hear voices or feel dissociated (e.g., not "in" your own body and somehow separate from yourself), please mention this to your family doctor the next time you get a checkup. I'd hate to have you go "Wow!" in a state of religious ecstasy, only to drop dead from an undiagnosed brain tumor or other lesion.

I'm not joking here. Tell your doctor at the first possible opportunity.

I have an aging laptop. It is near death. I've given it to my 6 year old to play with. She goes on pbskids.org and watches Spongebob videos with it.

I was alone in the house. She was at her piano lesson. I was about 6-8 feet away from the closed laptop, that was sitting on the coffee table. All of a sudden, it started playing music. I JUMPED.

It was really weird. The music lasted- I don't know- maybe 10 seconds. Maybe less.

Was it God? Ghosts? Demons? Mischievous leprechauns? The spirit of my dead mother, whose birthday, coincidently, is this week? The tooth fairy? My daughter's top tooth has been on the verge of falling out for weeks. Maybe the tooth fairy was sending me a message to just yank that tooth out because she is getting tired of checking in every night and not finding a tooth under the pillow. When I was a little girl, I was sure there were goblins in the woods. I haven't thought about then for years. Maybe they came back.

Or maybe, the cat jumped or a truck drove by and bumped the computer, and in its near death throws, the aging laptop turned on momentarily.

Not impressive, Andrew. Basically, all that video proves is that a three year old girl thought she saw Jesus. It's much more likely that some natural cause was responsible for her recovery, and people only attributed it to Jesus because she had a dream or vision about him.

What you don't see in that picture is that his suffering is temporary 'a blink of an eye'. What you don't see in that picture is that that person is secured ETERNALLY

This is just a convenient way for you to pretend to yourself that human suffering doesn't 'matter'. Because you can just say that it's only temporary and thus doesn't matter. Well, it sure mattered to that child, and here you sit making light of it while you play pretend regarding 'miracles' like your god helping you win a video game or getting someone to stop and help with your flat tire.

I think that if you actually ran into someone who was suffering like that, you would probably not recite platitudes about how "suffering is temporary". At least I hope not.

War's and rumors of Wars, famines, they are all a sign that Jesus is coming soon

Uh... Andrew, you *do* know that humans have been waging war for thousands of years, don't you? Why didn't your imaginary friend make his grand re-entrance when Charlemagne was murdering Saxons, or at the Battle of Hastings, or when Gengis Khan was rolling across Asia with his army?

Then again, I'm not a betting man, I'm the guy who passes the casino of religious woo at 6:30 AM heading to work who sees everyone stumble out of the casino, utterly skint and shielding their eyes from the harsh light of day.

Logged

Science: I'll believe it when I see itFaith: I'll see it when I believe it

No I was saying that I think he was an angel not a man maybe. I have seen angels before in the natural before. The whole event surrounded me seeing them in the Spirit and then calling upon God right when the tire poppped only 2 seconds later for a guy to stop with the right equipment (not my spare I didn't have one) and fix it and his phone says praise God. Thats a medium miracle anyway you look at it and maybe even a big one if that guy happened to be a real angel and not a man.

Thank you Andrew - what a neat dodge that gets around any question of your god tampering with free will. "It wasn't a real man, it was an angel".

So....what you are saying NOW is that god heard your prayer - "please fix my tyre". And instead of inflating it....god sent down an angel, disguised as a mechanic, with a working cell phone and truck, and a working air compressor and lots of other mechanics tools......

Hmm. Sounds like a particularly convoluted way of answering your prayer.

In any case, not only does your new apology not answer half of my post, it makes the part you did NOT answer a whole lot more relevant. You are now saying that - rather than tweak earthly circumstances a little - your god sends down angels and creates vast chunks of matter in order to service your little needs. So I'll ask again.

.....your claim is that your god directly intervened in the world, rapidly and significantly, to answer your prayer. So why aren't you praying for a cure for cancer, or for an end to famine? You've shown us that god jumps when you call, so why not pray for others rather than yourself?

And if you ARE praying for those things.....can you explain why your god leaps so quickly to your aid to save you a little inconvenience, but ignores you when you ask for aid for the suffering of others?

If you REALLY want us to come around to your god, those are questions you need to answer.

War's and rumors of Wars, famines, they are all a sign that Jesus is coming soon

Earth has only had about 290 or so years of non-wars. Going by what Creationists believe, Earth being 6,000 years old, and all, that's 5,710 years of war. In that time period all what you list were evident. So, how many years is soon you misanthrope?

War's and rumors of Wars, famines, they are all a sign that Jesus is coming soon

Earth has only had about 290 or so years of non-wars. Going by what Creationists believe, Earth being 6,000 years old, and all, that's 5,710 years of war. In that time period all what you list were evident. So, how many years is soon you misanthrope?

No I was saying that I think he was an angel not a man maybe. I have seen angels before in the natural before. The whole event surrounded me seeing them in the Spirit and then calling upon God right when the tire poppped only 2 seconds later for a guy to stop with the right equipment (not my spare I didn't have one) and fix it and his phone says praise God. Thats a medium miracle anyway you look at it and maybe even a big one if that guy happened to be a real angel and not a man.

Thank you Andrew - what a neat dodge that gets around any question of your god tampering with free will. "It wasn't a real man, it was an angel".

So....what you are saying NOW is that god heard your prayer - "please fix my tyre". And instead of inflating it....god sent down an angel, disguised as a mechanic, with a working cell phone and truck, and a working air compressor and lots of other mechanics tools......

Hmm. Sounds like a particularly convoluted way of answering your prayer.

In any case, not only does your new apology not answer half of my post, it makes the part you did NOT answer a whole lot more relevant. You are now saying that - rather than tweak earthly circumstances a little - your god sends down angels and creates vast chunks of matter in order to service your little needs. So I'll ask again.

.....your claim is that your god directly intervened in the world, rapidly and significantly, to answer your prayer. So why aren't you praying for a cure for cancer, or for an end to famine? You've shown us that god jumps when you call, so why not pray for others rather than yourself?

And if you ARE praying for those things.....can you explain why your god leaps so quickly to your aid to save you a little inconvenience, but ignores you when you ask for aid for the suffering of others?

If you REALLY want us to come around to your god, those are questions you need to answer.